The Isles of the Blest Read online

  A cold wind blew and the joints of Hundred Battles ached in protest.

  “Tomorrow,” he said slowly, without enthusiasm, “we will have to count our losses and repair our weapons, because soon we must fight again. Every man of us must be armed and ready, Connla. That includes you. You have practiced with sword and shield and I know how quick you are. You will make a good warrior.”

  But Connla had seen the ruin of the battlefield. He had gone with the others to help carry in the dead, and had seen the puddles of blood soaking into the earth and heard men screaming in pain. When he was a little boy and his father the greatest of heroes, he had thought battle synonymous with glory. Now he knew different. Battle was the prelude to horror.

  “I have no desire to be a warrior, Father,” he said. It was the bravest act of his young life.

  The old chieftain leaped to his feet with blazing eyes. He was so shocked, so angry, that for a moment he was incoherent. “What are you saying! I cannot believe a son of mine would ever utter such words! You have gone mad, you are ill, lie down where you are and I will call a physician to heal you...”

  “I am not mad, nor ill, Father,” Connla interrupted. His voice was deep and overrode his father’s rantings. “I will gladly serve the tribe in any other way I can, but I have no desire to leave my guts spread out all over the earth for nothing.” He put it as bluntly as he could to make his father listen.

  Conn stared at him. He could not believe this glorious youth, the finest of his offspring, could be reluctant to take up arms. They came of warrior stock for a hundred generations! “You are only talking like this because you are dispirited,” Conn finally managed to say. “I know things have been very bad here for a while, but they will get better, you’ll see. The druid assures me the earth eventually rests herself enough to become productive again, and when that happens and everyone has enough food in their bellies, we will be stronger than any other tribe. This is just a temporary setback, boy.”

  Hundred Battles put his arm around his son’s shoulders and gave him a rough hug. “This is just a mood you’re in, eh? Eh? It will pass.” He squeezed again. “Come now, we’ll go into the hall and look in the bottoms of all the wine jars. We’ll find some dregs we can drink, and put some twigs on the fire, and be ourselves again, eh?”

  Connla let himself be cajoled into the hall, and he sat quietly there while his father regaled him with old war stories and optimistic plans for the future. But mostly he just stared into the fire and wondered what the future really held.

  Two

  EVERYTHING HAD CHANGED. Once, the reputation of Hundred Battles had been sufficient to hold other chieftains back from his borders, but now, it seemed, a new battle must be fought every other fortnight. Sometimes they were small border skirmishes, but sometimes they were terrible struggles that lasted for days, involving many men and numerous casualties. Conn used every morsel of skill and cunning he possessed just to keep from being completely overrun while he watched his borders being nibbled away.

  When he managed a victory, he captured the enemy warriors and tried to recruit them into his own army, making extravagant promises he had little hope of keeping. Some of the warriors did stay with him, as a result of dissatisfaction with their own chieftains or lands or wives, but they were not a trustworthy lot. When a better offer came along they would cheerfully desert and Conn knew it.

  His own children were a different matter. They must stay with him. Connla of the Fiery Hair had grown so tall and strong, in spite of the food shortage, that he would be worth three men in combat. Yet he still had no taste for battle. Sometimes his father looked at his first wife, lying fat and demanding in her bed, and wondered if his oldest son was really his.

  His other boys were growing to manhood and taking their places in the ranks of the fighting men, and as the situation grew more desperate even Fiery Hair was at last forced by his own conscience to join them. He could not do otherwise and remain an honorable man.

  A proud day that was for his father. The land was impoverished, the tribe was one step away from rebelling against his authority and selecting a new chieftain, but on the day his oldest son finally agreed to become a warrior, Conn of the Hundred Battles felt like a new man. He drank so much wine and sang so many war songs he awoke the next morning with an exploding head and a throat like raw meat.

  He did not care. Life was good again, his son would take up where he left off.

  Ignoring his pounding headache, the old chieftain was struggling into his clothes when his druid came to him. As usual, Coran simply materialized. One moment, he was not there—and in the next moment, he was. It could have been that Hundred Battles was growing deaf and just did not hear his approach, but no one dared suggest such a possibility.

  “You are sending your son out today, to meet the sons of Owen on the battlefield.”

  “I am.”

  Coran drew himself up to his full height. “Then be warned, my chieftain. When you force a man to do the job for which he is not fitted, you pull awry all the threads that weave his destiny!”

  Hundred Battles glared at his druid. “Why is it you never have good news for me anymore?”

  “I would bring you good news,” Coran said, “if you were doing good things. But...”

  “Out of my sight!” roared his chieftain. And then, to his servants, “Send my oldest son to me at once. I want him to carry my sword and shield into battle so he will do our family honor!”

  When Connla stood before his father, the young man kept his eyes cast down. His posture was that of the stolid ox that knows it must serve but does so with no passion for the task. “Make me proud of you, boy,” Hundred Battles kept saying to him. “Make me proud of you.”

  The army marched out to meet the latest enemy, and young Connla of the Fiery Hair was in the front rank. He had been well trained, he knew the sword work and the footwork. He knew just when to lift his shield and when to lower it to throw his javelin. All these things he did at the right time, in the right way ... and, to his surprise, he was still alive at the end of the day.

  Not only that, but the enemy had been the first to leave the field of battle.

  “You were victorious!” his comrades assured him, pounding him on the back. “We followed your red hair like a flame leading us onward and you led us right through the enemy lines. Their leader is dead, their loot is ours. Tomorrow we will attack again and drive the rest of them from this land. Then, if you will go with us, we will launch a new campaign against the next set of invaders.”

  Connla returned to his father’s stronghold with a weary heart. He had not enjoyed the fighting, or the killing. When men all around him were screaming, he had attacked with a quiet, deadly efficiency, just wanting it to be over so he could leave the scene. He did not look at the men he killed and did not join in stripping them of their gold and weapons.

  He felt sick inside when he considered the future, and the knowledge that he must fight again.

  That night he was toasted in his father’s banquet hall and he smiled and bowed, but made no victory speeches. Connla did not feel he had won anything.

  Yet step by step, he and the men who followed him drove the invaders out of their territory. Then they followed the enemy across the border into their own lands and relieved them of cattle and slaves and gold, bringing the treasure back to the Hill of Usna. Bards began composing mighty epics in honor of the fighting son of Hundred Battles, a man they predicted would be a greater warrior than even his father.

  Connla stood in the doorway of his father’s hall and gazed out at the misty land, wishing things could be as they had once been.

  “Tomorrow,” his father announced, “there will be no fighting. For as far as I can see, there is no stranger on our soil. So tomorrow we will celebrate by building a great bonfire on the hill and roasting our enemy’s cattle, and there will at last be singing and merriment again in my land.”

  “A bonfire will attract attention,” Coran warned. “Some new i
nvaders may come, drawn by its light.”

  Conn of the Hundred Battles shrugged. “What if they do? I have a strong son who will soon drive them away again. Eh? Eh?” He pounded his son on the shoulder and cackled with glee, feeling almost young again himself. Surely the tide had turned, and the next crop of grain would sprout. The next spring’s grass would be rich and nutritious again.

  So the bonfire was built to the chieftain’s order and his people danced around it, singing. They made wreaths of holly to adorn young Connla and gave him a carved stick of ash, its design gilded with enemy gold. He smiled and nodded and thanked them; he did all the proper things. But his eyes were sad.

  In the morning the whole hill reeked of the dead ashes of the bonfire. Hundred Battles took his oldest son with him when he went out to inspect the scene and look at the land beyond, in case there was some sign of invasion. The wind sang around them on the hilltop, it picked up ashes and swirled them into graceful shapes, it blew sweetly as if it had never crossed scorched earth where men lay dead.

  As Conn spoke of the next battle, the next victory, his son watched the ashes blow. Suddenly he straightened and peered harder, then shook his head as if he had seen nothing.

  The wind blew, the ashes danced, and he looked again. This time he rubbed his eyes.

  Coming toward him through the swirling ash he saw a young woman. She was dressed in strange clothing that glittered when she walked—if she was indeed walking. Her gait was more like the soaring of a bird in the air or the gliding of a salmon in a pool, she was that graceful. And her face was unlike any Connla had seen in his lifetime.

  She came straight up the hill toward him, her eyes fixed on his. Glossy black was her hair, curling all around her face. Very white was her skin, like skin that never sees the sun. She was tiny, no higher than Connla’s heart, and that same heart went out to the young woman the moment he saw her. “Who are you?” he asked in a whisper as she came up to him.

  The girl smiled. “You may call me Blathine,” she said. “In your language it means a little flower.”

  “Is not my language your language?” the boy asked in wonder.

  “It is not, for I come from a very different place.”

  Connla was enraptured by her beauty and the softness of her voice. She spoke so low he had to lean forward to catch her words, yet every word was pure and distinct. His eyes drank in her beauty, from her round white arms to the high insteps of her tiny feet in their silver slippers. No one in his father’s land knew how to tan leather as soft as the leather in those shoes. No one in his father’s land looked like Blathine.

  “Tell me about the place you come from,” Connla urged her. “Are there others there like you?”

  She laughed, a sweet silvery cascade of sound as delicate as the bluebells blooming on the hillside. “Where I come from, everyone is like me,” she said. “It is a beautiful place in all seasons. No one dies there, neither man nor woman, tree nor flower. Every day is a festival and we have everything we could possibly want. We sing and laugh and play games; we never say farewell to friends or have to shrink from enemies.”

  “Are your people cattlemen? Or plowmen? How do you feed and clothe yourselves? Whence comes your wealth?”

  “Ah, the source of our wealth is the land where we live, for we cherish our earth and she is good to us in return. We call our homeland the Isles of the Blest and it is a place of very great magic.”

  “Such things cannot be,” Connla said in amazement.

  “Can they not? But I am here to tell you they are real!” Her eyes flashed. Dark eyes they were, like the sky on a starless night.

  A few paces away Conn of the Hundred Battles stood talking with the captain of his guard, a red-faced, heavy-jowled man with a voice as gruff as his disposition. They were discussing the strengthening of fortifications around the chieftain’s stronghold and paying little attention to what went on around them. But the voice of Blathine, as sheer and silvery as starshine, somehow cut through their conversation.

  “What’s that?” said the old chieftain. “Who spoke?”

  Ronan, his captain, glanced around. “I heard no one.”

  “Listen ... there it is again.”

  “That’s the wind.”

  Hundred Battles frowned. “I could have sworn...” Then he noticed his son in animated conversation with empty space. The chieftain’s jaw sagged.

  “Connla!” he called. “Who are you talking to?”

  The young man turned. “Her name is Blathine,” he said. There were two red spots burning on his cheeks.

  “Whose name is Blathine? What are you saying, boy? I see no one.”

  Connla turned back and there was the girl, smiling at him. “But she’s right here beside me.”

  His father took a step forward, looking perplexed. “There is no one beside you.”

  Ronan let out a low, frightened exclamation. “He’s going mad!”

  Conn whirled upon him. “Don’t ever say that. There is nothing wrong with my son; he’s perfect.”

  “But he’s talking to someone who isn’t there.”

  “Someone is there,” the chieftain insisted. “I told you I heard a voice.” No sooner had he said the words than it came again, the sheer and silvery sound.

  Laughing, Blathine called out to him, “You son is speaking to the representative of a kingdom without aging or death, without poverty or hunger. What have you to offer him better than that, old man?”

  He could not be certain he heard her, yet Conn felt a chill touch his heart. The voice had no body, it might be only illusion. He hoped it was illusion, for it frightened him.

  “Go away!” he ordered as fiercely as if he were still in the strength of youth.

  Blathine laughed again. This time Hundred Battles could hear her very clearly. “You cannot drive me away as long as your son wants me. If I leave, I will take him with me to the Isles of the Blest, the Plains of Pleasure, for that is where he truly belongs.”

  “You will not take him anyplace!” screamed Conn of the Hundred Battles. He shook his gnarled old fists at the empty air.

  Ronan, who had still heard nothing but a peculiar sighing of the wind, looked from the father to the son and shook his head. “They’re both going mad,” he muttered. “This is a sad day for us indeed.”

  Blathine turned back to Connla and ran one small, slender hand across his fiery hair. “Come with me,” she said softly. “You are so beautiful, so flushed with life. Your skin is ruddy and bright and your heat warms me as I have not been warmed for a very long time. Come with me and we will do nothing but dance and celebrate, day after day.”

  “Does anyone ever die in battle on these islands of yours?”

  “No one ever dies in battle there,” she promised him solemnly.

  “And would we have far to go to get there?”

  “Not too far. If you look toward the setting sun, you will see our pathway. Come now, I will guide you.” She tugged at his arm just as Conn rushed up and grabbed his son by the other arm.

  “I don’t know what is happening, but you must pay no attention,” he said urgently to Connla. “If you are hearing voices, they are evil ones; close your mind to them. Tell yourself they are not real.” Even as he spoke these words, Hundred Battles realized his own mind had closed against the seductive, silvery voice, and he could no longer hear it. A sense of relief washed over him.

  But his son still had that intense, listening expression on his face.

  “Come with me,” the old chieftain urged a little more gently. “Come now.”

  “Come now,” echoed Blathine. “Come with me and never look back.”

  “Do you not hear her?” Connla asked his father. “Can you not see her? She is so very beautiful, and she comes from a land of enchantments.”

  “That is no land for you!” Hundred Battles roared. “I need you!”

  “And I need to find a better place than this,” his son told him. “A land of peace and happiness, where I will not
have to fight anymore. I am so tired of fighting. I want no one else’s blood on my hands.”

  “Utter nonsense and total rubbish,” his father told him. “A land of peace indeed. No land has peace for very long, because it is the way of life to struggle for existence. How well could we survive if we never fought? We would soon grow as weak as that miserable spindly grain in our fields. No, Connla, fighting is a necessity because it makes a man tough and resilient and proves who is better.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” whispered Blathine. Even to Connla, her voice seemed to be fading. He tried to shake off his father’s grip on his arm but the old man hung on with all the tenacity he possessed. A swirl of windblown ash from the bonfire sprang up around them, and when it subsided the girl was gone.

  Connla of the Fiery Hair called her name once, pleadingly, and then again. But there was no answer at all.

  “You have a fever,” his father told him. “That’s the problem. Come with me, we’ll go inside and you can lie down. I’ll have the women make poultices for your chest and potions for your belly and you’ll feel better soon.”

  “But I felt wonderful just a moment ago! When she was here.”

  Hundred Battles shook his head. “She was never here. You were dreaming with your eyes open. Help me with him, Ronan.” Together, the two of them got Connla into the bedchamber and forced him to lie down. The women came to cluck over him and everyone walked around him on tiptoe, thinking him ill.

  But Connla knew he was not ill. Since he had no choice he surrendered to their care, knowing their potions and poultices could never drive the memory of Blathine from him. He had seen her once; he would see her again.

  His father watched him out of the corner of his eye. He noted the way Connla gazed off into space, and gave absent-minded answers to the most simple questions. Sometimes he did not answer at all, but appeared to be listening intently to ... something else.

  “It is definitely some form of enchantment,” Hundred Battles decided. “Fearing the strength of my next generation, one of my enemies has had his own druids cast spells on the boy, to weaken him. Well, I have my own druids and I will match them spell for spell! They shall not take my strongest weapon from me!”